This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK edition of the ebook.

Tied into The Angels Take Manhattan, this ebook constitutes a prequel of sorts. It's most notable for adopting a cod noir style and presenting events from Melody Malone’s first person POV. The gambit allows author Justin Richards to enjoy himself, and his playful pastiche does a fine job of conveying River Song’s unusual world-view.

The decision to link a novella, or long-ish short story, to TATM fits tidily with that episode’s emphasis on clattering typewriters and storytelling practices, as well as imitating the Melody Malone book that we’re shown on screen. It therefore has a sort of instant authenticity. Yet one might have expected the novel the Doctor reads from to itself become a tie-in, with glimpsed on-screen chapter titles being fleshed out, precisely inter-linking ebook release and televised tale. Instead, The Angel’s Kiss eschews such direct expansion of the story world, and sets its sights on bit-part players such as Julius Grayle and Sam Garner the private eye. More substantial than recent online prequels, but nevertheless far briefer and less narratively developed than an episode, this ebook compresses its storyline into a fairly limited number of settings and incidents.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty with this e-extra is how it uses the Weeping Angels. Of course, Moffat’s own TV scripts have form here, with the Angels’ modus operandi shifting radically from appearance to appearance – sometimes they kill victims, other times they bounce people back in time. Here they don’t really do either of those things, but instead drain life/time energy in a novel manner. In a sense, then, the Weeping Angels can pretty much be used to play whatever temporal tricks their author desires; as long as “timey wimey” shenanigans are involved at some level, and mixed with narrative threat, then the Angels basically remain on-brand. What best characterises them as a monster is that they’ve never been set in stone; each new appearance adds to their powers and purposes. And this is certainly true of The Angel’s Kiss. Angels can be rewritten, especially when they're read. But I still felt that Richards’ storyline reduced its angelic evil to an overly convenient, plastic and malleable plot device at times. Certain other Who villains would have fitted more obviously into events, rather than the Weeping Angels being reworked to carry things.

Ebooks such as this may well offer one future for Doctor Who publishing. Presumably overheads are lower than print editions, something which may enable ebooks to be targeted at a smaller fanbase or readership compared to the relative mass market required for many current Who titles. (I’ve always lamented the fact that there was no further script book published after Series One, something which I’ve heard said was a result of that title’s poor sales; perhaps ebook releases would allow original scripts to once again see the light of day). But ebooks would presumably frustrate the eleventh Doctor himself; it’s difficult to tear out the final page, for example: endings remain obstinately in place. Perhaps ebooks like The Angel’s Kiss might also frustrate sections of fandom; you can’t put this one on the shelf, nor admire its cover art in physical form. At the risk of coming over all old school – as if I’ve been thrown out of time by mysterious forces – The Angel’s Kiss would still have been more compelling for me as a material thing.

Regardless of its format, though, this delivers a pleasurable and well-crafted addition to River Song’s story. The classic noir detective typically has to contend with a mysterious femme fatale, but Melody Malone wraps both roles into one elegant package, her career at the Angel Detective Agency never distracting from her desire to make an impression on the opposite sex. But whereas Alex Kingston’s TV performance leaves some room for ambiguity as to just how knowing River’s sexuality and manipulation of male characters might be, the problem with first person narration is that it converts the character’s allure and mystery into descriptions of pointing the right bits at the right chap in order to get his attention. Unspoken game-playing becomes conscious, in-your-face strategy, curiously making River more one-dimensional rather than more complicated. You’d imagine that getting inside a character’s head would achieve the opposite effect.

By extending The Angels Take Manhattan, as well as giving Melody Malone all the best lines and pushing at least one Weeping Angel in a somewhat unexpected direction, The Angel’s Kiss glosses various character and creature arcs. Knowingly arch in its noir stylings, this arc angel of an ebook is never less than a hell of a lot of fun. In short, no reader will be left stony-faced by its incessant wise-cracking and wordplay.

This review is based on the MP3 download from Big Finish, and contains spoilers.

For me, a spin-off series for Henry Gordon Jago and Professor George Litefoot was always going to be a winner, such is the strength of character from their first appearances in The Talons of Weng-Chiang. In many ways it is a shame that they didn't get their own television series back then, but this has been more than made up for with their continuing adventures from Big Finish. Now, after some seventeen adventures, it's finally time for the intrepid duo to have their first visit off-world, and here they are off to see the sights with the Sixth Doctor (encountered last season) in this special release, Voyage to Venus.

THE PLOT:

No prizes for guessing where the Victorian investigators end up, of course, though this is not the Venus that they or the Doctor expected to see. This is a planet some several hundred years earlier than a previous visit by Doctor with Jamie and Victoria (not that one, Jago!), and things are very different than he recalls as first they are captured by green-furred Venusians and then find themselves considered as animals and carted off to a menagerie!

In the early set-up we discover that these Venusians are a female-dominated society, they are ruled by Grand Empress Vulpina, and are served by the more primitive Thraskins. This is a Venus many years in the future, and though early on Jago thinks to claim the planet for the Empire it turns out the Earth they knew is a long-dead, barren place. As the story progresses, their society becomes more defined, living in large floating cities over a land that until recently was barren but had suddenly come to violent life with lush jungles and creatures such as thraskins and also herds of shanghorn - one of which apparently killed the chief scientist and was being hunted when the trio were encountered.

Intrigue ensues, as Litefoot and the Doctor uncover how the scientist was really killed, who is to blame, and how it all points to the "Forbidden Cave". Meanwhile, Jago becomes Vulpina's entertainer, learns more about the status of Venusian males than he really wants to know(!), but is also in the position to be able to warn the others of their impending capture once Vulpina decides they know too much - and there's no prize for guessing where we head to next!

Revelations continue during the latter half of the story as we discover that the dominant species from Venus and Earth have more in common than they realise, and that the original, unknown ancient race of Venusians (Sitherians) are not quite extinct after all ... and as Vulpina tries to erradicate all knowledge and witnesses to this, an all out war between the old and new inhabitants looms ...

OBSERVATIONS:

Venus hasn't featured directly in the television series (unless you count its status as a marker buoy in Enlightenment), but two of the third Doctor's traits hail from the planet, his penchant for their martial arts and lullabies. Unsurprisingly, both get name-checked in this adventure. The Doctor discusses learning martial arts during his previous visit early on, but the latter aspect of his third persona turns out to be a key factor in the resolution of the story, with the rampaging hordes of slanghorns brought to bear by a cheery rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by Jago! As scientist-cum-musician Felina embraces the tune in their new appreciation of the art (Venusians had no concept of music before), you can quite quickly leap to where this is headed a few hundred years later!

Back in Jago and Litefoot's time of the 19th Century, it was still thought that Venus might have been a lush planet underneath those rolling clouds, so the duo would not have been surprised at the jungle they found outside the TARDIS on their journey ... though a little further afield than Borneo! I must admit I wasn't so enamoured of Venusians themselves in the story, however - this isn't so much a reflection on the actresses playing the Venusians (or the solitary male Sitherian), just that I think I wanted to hear more of the main three actors! One problem might have been how a 'race of women' is a quite familiar pulp-sci-fi concept (not to mention the attention to Galaxy 4 of late), and the ideas of an ancient race that put itself into suspension until a time it can return is also reminiscent of the "Earth Reptiles versus Man" theme that is another Pertweeism. So, with these 'same-o' ideas, ahem, 'floating' about I found my attention wandering a bit with those plot devices. Also, Vulpina's motivation is a little unclear, too - it seemed quite obvious that the ancient intelligence Vepaja was way too powerful to be stopped from continuing his reclaimation simply by making the cave 'forbidden', or later - in another action reminiscent of the Pertwee era - removing a problem by blowing it up!

On the other hand, Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter excel as always; maintaining a convincing contemporary world view can be tricky, and writer Jonathan Morris does a good job of engaging their Victorian counterparts with the usual vigour, practical thought and ethics! Litefoot gets to show off his forensic credentials (though why wouldn't Venusians have such skills?), but the alliterative Jago steals the show with the best lines - even to the point where Vulpina comments: "you have the most extraordinarily expansive speech patterns!"

Colin Baker continues to endow his Doctor with both a sense of force and fun, and the mellower, post-Season 22 depiction that he has portrayed in his Big Finish adventures still fares well. Though not exactly in the background, the Doctor is perhaps a little less prominent in this story, but then I feel it is a Jago and Litefoot tale with the Doctor rather than the other way around, so in that case this would be expected. Nevertheless he does play the important role of filling in the details of the past, present and future that the other characters would otherwise be ignorant of (like the slanghorns' vegetarian nature, or surprise at the Thraskins being "willing" servants at this stage of their history).

The emphasis in the plot of the lemur-like race meant that it wasn't such a surprise that they turned out to be the 'real' Venusians after all, long-since forgotten. The idea of a racial bank being reactivated to repopulate a planet is another old tried-and-trusted staple, though to rebuild the planet's ecosystem in six years does seem a tad quick! (that's three re-s in one sentence, makes me ...) I mentioned parallels with the 'Silurians' earlier, but there are other comparisons between Earth and Venus made during the story. Both they and the Sitherians had to 'abandon' their way of life due to a disaster, later to be re-awoken by the outside influence by the new planet 'owners'. Humans turned the Earth into a lifeless barren world after excessive exploitation, and Vepaja explains that Venus had suffered a similar fate in the distant past, which led them to build their repository. And at the end of the story the Doctor's observation the two Venusian claimants living together in harmony in the future is something that was a cautiously optimistic outcome in Cold Blood.

CONCLUSION:

All-in-all, the story has nothing too complex to tax the brain, and the familiarity of plot elements mean that there are no sudden revelations to blow the listener away. This isn't a bad thing, however - the adventure is a bit of light-hearted fun, with sparkling dialogue for the main characters - which was what I was listening for, anyway!

The story ends on a cliffhanger, which leads neatly into the next special to feature the three compatriots, next month's Voyage to the New World.

The latest batch of BBC Vintage Beeb releases (the third), wherein BBC LPs/tapes of the 1970s are reissued on CD, in some cases for the first time, includes another outing for Genesis of the Daleks. This is its fourth release; following the original LP/cassette release in 1979, the BBC Radio Collection double cassette pairing with Slipback in 1988 and the expanded CD release of 2001 paired with Exploration Earth.

I have two problems with the Vintage Beeb range. The first concerns the very concept of a 'Vinyl replica'. Now to me, like a lot of people, this means a faithful replica of the original album sleeve in cardboard. This is something that the Japanese have been doing with albums for nearly twenty years; releasing faithful reproductions of many albums in exact detail with gatefold sleeves, embossed sleeves, cut outs, inserts etc. Even with some EMI albums of the early 1980s they have exactly replicated the paper inner bag complete with the "home taping is killing music" logo and slogan! (Apologies for those readers under forty for which this will mean nothing. But believe me it shows attention to detail!)

Unfortunately to BBC Audio/AudioGo, 'Vinyl replica' just means a reissue of a title onto CD in a standard jewel case but now with the original sleeve artwork/photo used on the booklet and a black CD. The latter is a nice gimmick, but it hardly makes the release a replica!

The second problem is that whilst we are seeing some long unavailable albums such as I’m Sorry I’ll read that Again released onto CD, this range still contains a number of titles previously released on CD as part of the BBC Radio Collection. Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Magic Roundabout and Genesis of the Daleks to name but three. The question on a lot of peoples’ lips is "When are we going to see a CD release for the themes albums that were a mainstay of the BBC Records and Tapes range of the 1970s?" I would dearly love a re-mastered copy of 1979’s BBC Space Themes as my original tape is showing its age... but then it is thirty years old! I suppose the problem here is that is easier to clear the rights for BBC shows, rather than music collections.

I remember buying the original release of Genesis of the Daleks back in 1979, when it was timed to coincide with the screening of Destiny of the Daleks. At the time it was hoped that it would be the start of a series, but despite being a consistent seller it was sometime before we got a range of Doctor Who audio releases!

Even now, Tom Baker’s opening line "I stepped from the TARDIS onto a bleak planet..." is as great a hook as ever, drawing the listener in to a breakneck version of the original TV story. Although the ensuing argument with the Time Lord about interrupting a transmat beam jars somewhat! The linking narration fits very well, filling in the gaps of story inherent in condensing a six-part TV story down to under an hour’s worth of LP. And Tom’s reading is superb, as we move from one memorable scene to the next. Only being an hour long, such a short version should not work; but it does and all credit to Derek Groom who produced it back in 1979.

There is one difference to the original audio release though. That annoying jump cut at the end of side two of the original LP, wherein the theme cuts in halfway through the Dalek’s closing line resulting in "we will take our rightful place as the supreme power of the univer", has been rectified in line with the previous CD release, so you now get "universe" in all its glory. Whether this is a good thing or bad, I leave to individual choice!

Despite problems with presentation, to quote Destiny of the Daleks, "Its what’s on the inside that matters." This is still a very valid release and heartily recommended for two reasons. Firstly, it does reproduce the original 1979 release complete with end of side one cliff-hanger. And secondly, it can be ordered online for not much over £4, making it very good value!